Chapter Text
Jake had never really registered the reality that his children could actually die. But, he had Lo'ak for a son, so the possibility would always stay above zero so long as that boy continued to deliberately disobey orders. And, when his comm went off with his boy's panicked voice to come get them, he hadn't hesitated to hunt his kids down. He pressed his fingers to his ear, sweat slowly dripping down his brow.
"Son, listen to me very carefully. Pull back right now. Do not make a sound. Get out of there. Move!"
"Copy. Pulling back now."
Why were his children so stupid?
Neteyam cuts off his train of thought, devising a half-baked plan. "Dad, I know a short-cut!" And, before Jake can stop him, protest, he dove his Ikran away from their initial location as his wife went straight after him. So much for being smart about it, he supposed. Sully turned his ikran at the last second, following after his son and wife. They'd deal with the plan as they traveled,
for now, he just needed his kids safe.
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1 month ago
Dawoud shoved against the bars of the cell as best as he could. It was difficult to do, however, with the leg he had to deal with as he wobbled. His vocal chords ached as he screamed, whining and groaning for the men, and the older woman, to let him go. The last thing he had remembered? Singing with his family in the pews, on the day of 'Sha'anini'. He'd been holding the little thing in his arms before the bang went off. And, by some miracle, he had lived, hiding under the seat.
It had been 6 years ago.
As his left ear gave out, ringing continuously with blood dripping out of the canal, his right rang with screams of the men and women. Screams of children. Crying.
And blood. So much blood.
Splattered onto the walls. Splattered onto the Icons.
Just like the night they had taken his sister, brother and him. But, somehow, this had been worse. And then he'd felt a hand on his leg, as it dragged him out from under the seat with the thing in his arms. His voice was hoarse with soot trapped in the slits of his esophagus, yet still he attempted to scream. Protests weakly rang out as the person took him.
"ELIAN! E-ELIAN? Akh! Akhi! Mama?... Baba?"
And as he called for his family, refusing to acknowledge their deaths, a sudden, harsh, yank on his body cut him off as he slid. The person, a man, he'd assumed, turned him over, and, with all the voice he could muster, let out a blood-curdling, deep, scream.
The blue skinned man—was it an animal? smacked him in the face, and he clutched the thing to his chest tighter as he quietly whined in pain. The hand was abnormally large, and he couldn't understand a word it had said, besides the ones he'd barely learned in his mandatory english classes.
"...-your mouth...-for you!"
It yanked him up by the collar of his dress shirt, a maroon color, with his bag on his back, and walked him into a vehicle. Not a car. Not a truck. No. A giant, circular, dome. He thought it was a vehicle. It looked like it could move, he had assumed. The creature shoved him inside, and he would have face planted onto the steel floor had he not instinctively flipped over, keeping the thing close to him.
"Found one."
And after? You know what they had done to him? They did not kill him. Not yet. They shoved him into a tube. A very cold tube, as they yanked the thing out of his arms. And as soon as he had been torn away from it, he screamed. Louder than a toddler throwing a tantrum, louder than when he was a child, as he tried reaching for it before they held him down, locked him in, and shut the door.
He just wanted it back.
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Present Day
"You're his aren't you?"
Lo'ak hissed at the ugly, scarred man masking as their people. What a geriatric sack of-
The man, Miles, laughed in mocking. Prat.
"Yeahhh, you're his alright. Where is he?"
And, because he has a mouth on him, because Lo'ak is his father's son, he hisses out, in Na'vi,
"Sorry, I don't speak English,--to buttholes." He cries out as Quaritch yanks at his queue, feeling a splitting headache coming on. Yet, he stands his ground. Because his dad stood his ground, and so he must as well. Lo'ak maintains eye contact with the man wearing his people's skin like a costume.
The man spits out a command in his language, and the boy hates the way he butchered the dialect he grew up with.
"Where is your father?" Lo'ak's eyes unknowingly well up with tears at the hold he has of his queue, yet still he does not speak up. Do not give in. He must have taken that as a challenge, because before he can blink, Quaritch had grabbed Kiri by her hair, pulling out a knife.
"That's how you wanna play it?" The tip of the weapon pricks slightly at the girl's throat, and she whimpered in fear, attempting to break free of his grip. A flash of panic washes over her brother, racking his brain for a plan. Anything. Any piece of information he could pull out and form into some kind of rescue.
"NO! Leave her alone!" Spider cuts in, skidding to a stop in between Lo'ak and the man unknown as his father. All three heads turn to the only human boy in this conversation—at least, that was what Lo'ak could see, for he could not see the other one, the one with the dark and frizzy medium length curls, the boy with the girlish lashes accustomed to Middle Easterns and North Africans.
He could not see the boy who was clutched in the arms of another imposter Na'vi, his grip tight, as he held the thing in his arms once again. Lo'ak did not notice the boy whose head was lowered in fear, turned away, afraid of the ongoing confrontation. He did not notice him, and so he kept his focus on his sister in the hands of that demon, and his friend, who had thrown himself into danger for her. What a skxawng.
"...What's your name, kid?"
A beat of silence. Spider's thin eyes go wide, fear in his body language, as though recognizing him.
"..Uh, S-Spider. Socorro."
"...Javier?"
"Nobody calls me that." Spider's tone drips with teenage attitude, the one they had beaten out of the boy, at least, what they had thought was attitude. Quaritch keeps his eyes on the human boy—the pale one, as he roughly tosses over Kiri to an avatar. He twists her arm back, keeping her still as she struggles.
"Quiet!"
The company watch as Quaritch bends down to match Spider's height amongst the Na'vi. He stares into his blue eyes for a moment, thin and almond shaped;the ones he gave him, if nothing else.
"Well. I'll be damned. I thought they sent you back to earth."
"They can't put five year olds in cryo, deuche."
Quaritch allows himself to smirk. Oh, if only he knew.
He backs himself away from the boy, and Lo'ak steadies himself as he stands, forming into a fighting stance. He felt foolish for following them even after being told explicitly not even to go near the area. But what was done is done.
"Iron Sky, Blue One, we’re ready to extract. We are bringin’ out high value prisoners."
Quaritch turns his head toward the human boy, his son, grinning freakishly. To Wainfleet, he switches to english fluently, and Lo'ak breathes a sigh of relief. His butchering of their language was haunting.
"Sully’s not the lone wolf any more. His weakness is his family."
It is then that they move, taking them all hostage deeper into the forest as the woman talks in his ear, that they bring the boy. He is last to follow, being dragged this way and that. The man holding him, the avatar, lets go of his arm, choosing instead to grasp at his tangled curls, shushing him as he whines.
Lo'ak does not notice, as Wainfleet snaps his head back every time he attempts to move it backwards. So, no, he does not yet see the boy, not until Quaritch stops, finding a piece of machinery, a screen, with a female Na'vi's face on it, his mother,
that he finds the squirming boy with a bunched up,...something, in his arms.
Not a little Na'vi boy. Not an avatar. No.
A bronze-skinned, short, human, boy.
"What the-!"
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"No, boy, stay with the ikran."
Sully pushes Neteyam back slightly, firmness kept in his voice. He was not risking losing another child. He still had 3 to find, and their friend.
He watched as Neteyam deflated, "I mean it, alright?",
"Yes, sir."
and, satisfied with his son's compliance, he and Neytiri run off into the forest. Jake keeps his gun cocked, his wife following with her bow pulled.
Their movement together is fluid, as one, the glow of the forest illuminating Jake's eyesight.
"Eagle eye, devil dog, say your status, over."
A haunting wave of silence rushes over the chirping sounds of the forest, and he looks over at his wife as his eyes widen.
"Eagle eye, how copy?"
One moment goes by before the voice that is not Lo'ak's comes up.
"Jake Sully! You hear me, Corporal? I’ve got your kids! How you copy that?"
He slows to a stop, Neytiri's brows furrows. That was not his son.
"Who is this?"
"It's your past catchin' up to you, son."
Crap. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. That was him? He was alive? Neytiri quietly gasps, the blue collar voice forever engraved into her brain, the man who would always be known as the one who killed her father. Who killed Tsu'tey. Quaritch went off the mic, and he could briefly hear him yelling, "talk to him!", before he'd heard his boy's shaky, apologetic tone in his ear.
"Dad, uh -- we’re all here -- Kiri, Spider and Tuk. I’m sorry, Dad, I --, and there's this-!" His kid cuts off at the last sentence as Quaritch yanks the mic from him. Jake holds himself from begging the man to let him hear his son's voice once more.
"Now listen up, Corporal. I’m gonna give you coordinates and you’re going to show your face or you’re gonna have a real short Christmas list." And, as he feels his wife's arm grasp onto his biceps for support in her shock, his jaw clenches, eyes narrowing in anger at his disgusting audacity to threaten his children. What a weak, feeble, man.
"I took you under my wing, Jake -- and you betrayed me. You killed your own kind. Good men. I will NOT hesitate to execute your kids."
And then he took off, Neytiri following him throughout the trees, bow extended.
"Give me the coordinates."
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Lo'ak stared at the human boy, unashamed that it may be considered rude to scrutinize him as he shrank in shame from everyone's gaze. Wainfleet yanked on his queue and he hissed, turning away from him.
What scared him the most, however, was that unlike Max and Norm, who needed oxygen masks and inhalers to survive on Pandora air, the boy stood, manhandled by the fake Na'vi man, no mask over his face, no inhaler, no cannula.
Strange.
The demon was breathing like them, and yet he was still a demon. He narrowed his eyes at him, no use, seeing as the boy hadn't looked at anyone or anything since he'd seen him. What, had he, perhaps, stolen the lungs of a Na'vi? Is that why he could breathe their air? Had he harvested their organs? The human boy was with the enemy, and so of course Lo'ak had thought the worst of him.
Blood-sucking grifter.
Wainfleet turned his head away once more, and he looked at his sisters and Spider, reassuring them silently with his expression.
Kiri yips a high pitched tune, one he knows all too well, and, even as the man holding her attempts to hush her, she persists. Now, they just had to wait for their mother. The silence is horrificly stiff, and Lo'ak feels sweat drip off his back in the worst uncomfortable position.
He cannot for the life of him focus with the bronze-skinned boy in sight. Part of him was disgusted with him, at what he could have possibly done alongside Quaritch and his meatheaded goons;the other part of him, however, The embarrassed part, had to admit he was fascinated.
The Na'vi he had grown up with all twisted their hair in various styles of braids, beaded and done. Spider had his in nicely done locs. Kiri had done it for him. But Spider's hair was of golden stature. And pin straight, however slightly thick it may have been.
The boy's curls had him curious for only a moment. He was sweaty, that was obvious. But the puffiness of each coil surprised him, they were not done in tight ringlets. They spread out into funny little twists at the end of each strand, reaching just barely below the nape of his neck. And his skin was of lightly brushed bronze. Even in the dark, with the bioluminescence illuminating off him, Lo'ak could tell Spider was significantly paler than he was. He was not exposed to demon media. Nor these demons in general.
He hadn't known they could look like that.
His thoughts of the little rat cut off as he heard a female's vocals yip. Him and his sisters looked at each other. Their mother was here. But the demons did not know that.
And so they waited for her chaos.
Another yip. All Na'vi ears stand alert now, waiting quietly for what is to come. Spider quietly unsheathes a knife.
The man holding Kiri moves the slightest inch, and an arrow pierces through his chest, disposing of him in an instant.
The war was here.
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Neytiri watches the arrow fly into the demon that had a hold on her daughter, readying another. She is proud as her children injure their captives, getting away.
And she shoots at the man who had attempted to take her oldest daughter, the arrow ripping through his throat. She zips past the trunk she'd hid behind, his voice tearing into the night.
"That you, Missus Sully?"
Her footsteps are light against the dirt floor as she slides her body around the barks of trees, bow strung and pointed. She would kill him. She would tear him apart.
"Demon! I will kill you as many times as I need."
His laugh rings out into the cool night air, and she is disgusted by it. Disgusted by his carefree attitude, as though he hadn't just threatened to kill her children. Let him try, if he is able, for she will shed his blood happily. She will watch the blood pool out of his body, and she will not mourn. She will not guilt over a man, a demon, like this.
It goes silent for a moment, and she quietly exhales, wondering if he had planned on attacking her quietly. She walks back, pointing her bow at every corner her eyes could manage to see. She had not heard his voice yet.
Strange.
---------------------------------------------------------- Dawoud pants as the man wraps his arm around his throat, slamming them into the back of the tree, as he protects it with his body. His eyes widen with fear.
"Listen here, N*srani boy, if I find you running away with these little freaks, I'll drag you back by your filthy hair and cut his heart out. And then I will FEED IT TO YOU. Understand me, Davey boy?"
No, actually, the boy hadn't understood a word besides the slur he'd just called him, albeit horrendously in a southern twang, and the threats he'd made against him. But he understood not to make himself seen, at the very least, so he shakily nodded as best he could with the man's arm against his throat. At least he'd remembered to say it into his right ear.
"Good. Glad you've learned to listen, runt." He pat his cheek, a smirk on his face as Dawoud looked away from him. Looked anywhere but into his eyes. Because the man reminded him of his fear of snakes;they could smell fear, and the boy was riddled with it.
It was no wonder the world had fallen due to one.
'Arhamni, ya Adonai.'
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Jake held onto his older daughter as she reached for him, and he brought her and his other two children close to him.
They were safe. For now.
At least, he had believed them to be, before turning, finding Spider being dragged away by Quaritch. Kiri yelled out to him in protest, and he had attempted to run onto the ship. Every fake Na'vi jumped on, and he grabbed his gun, shooting one in the chest.
Another ran at him, jumping onto him, and they quarreled for a moment before Sully kicked his chest, shoving the man off. A bullet lodged into his throat, and as he began to chase after Quaritch with his grip on the boy, he stopped in shock.
A human boy, one without an oxygen mask, being manhandled by one of the retcoms.
And so, assuming the human was with them, he shot at the man holding him, watching as he fell to the ground, the boy gasping in shock as he pushed himself away, before Jake gripped his bicep, yanking him away from his chance at going on the ship. If he was Na'vi boy, perhaps Jake would have treated him with less distaste. But his emotions clouded his mind, and he made the decision that the kid was one of them.
Quaritch wanted Spider? Fine.
But he was going to take a souvenir while he was at it.
He would soon register the cooing noise coming from the bundle in the human's arms.
A baby.
.
.
.
.
.
.